Computers - Operating System - Internet Browser

What's your poison?

My home computer is a Dell laptop with:

LINUX - Ubuntu OS

I browse with Firefox.

I have done my very best to ween myself, and my family off Microsoft products and into the world of Linux.

I do have a desktop at home with Windows XP.

Anybody else using a Linux Distro?

Linux Ubuntu is one of the many Virtual Machines I have running under OSX on my Mac.
I run Macs at home and at work. I start up a VM using VMWare fusion whenever I need to run non OSX software.

I use Safari and Firefox as a web browser. I never use Internet Exploiter or any other browser on windoze because it's too slow, and too insecure.

At work I have to use Windows XP and IE7.

I love my home laptop.

I just got a new Nikon point and shoot camera. I need to figure out how to use Ubuntu and that camera in a useful fashion and I won't need Windows at all when I'm home.

guess i'm old school....
at work i use 2000pro & xp pro
at home i have...
windows 95 b version(old puter i put together from other old parts)
millennium (old desktop i gave to the wife)
toshiba satellite vista svc pack 2 (my laptop)

i also have some really cool software that i use everday.....autodesk autocad and various other inspection and mark-up programs by them and my personal favorite mastercam vs9.1...it's fun and challenging to create "stuff"in 3d....and even more fun to then go to my machine and make it. it's a 5axis router(technically it's 7axis) but it's 5axis motion...i can make nearly anything you can imagine as long as it's aluminum,plastic or wood.it's capacity is 10ft length x 5ft width x 2ft height. and yea...i've made bike parts....car parts....boat parts etc.... but my "job" is to create and make light reflectors and housings and lighting related stuff.

I've been on Macs since OS 8.x. I was a OS X Public Beta tester and have been on OS X ever since. Great OS! I would love to get to know something about Linux, but just don't have the time. I use Safari 99% of the time, but have used Firefox, and dare I say, my trusty old Netscape on occasion.

Right now I'm running a 17" PowerBook G4. When Apple announced they were switching to Intel processors, I got scared and went out and bought the last PPC machine they made before the big switch. I got the biggest baddest PowerBook they made at the time. And I'm happy I did as they are still working out some bugs with the Intels. Although they are getting much better and my PowerBook is getting old. When Apple goes to the next OS this fall (Snow Leopard OS 10.6) I will be shit out of luck since they are dropping support for PPC machines with that OS update.

I am able to run the VirtualPC emulator with Windows XP Pro. It's a bit slow, but I only use it for a few things like my PartSmart program so I can look up Yamaha parts here at home. Saves me from having to hack into the work computers when I need stuff on the weekends. When I'm not on the bike forums, I'm downloading & uploading torrents, burning movies and music, and playing around on Facebook all night. I also manage my family tree web site which I've had for almost 10 years. Genealogy is my other passion besides my new toy, the WRX. Otherwise, I'm outside sweating it out turning wrenches and running boats for a living. Gotta pay the bills ya know.

I like XP Professional just fine. Worked in IT briefly during pre Y2K, so lived through the NT4.0/Windows 2000/XP changes as one of them CCNA, CNE, MCSE type guys. No real drama if you paid attention to what you were supposed to be doing. Did cry a lot when everyone drank the Kool-Aid and moved from Netware to MS in the network world. Have a brother in law who's a Shell network guru living and working in Unix. His life always seemed a lot more complicated than mine. But then they paid him a lot more than I made as well. He goes back to the days of big iron.

Hated supporting Macs - including my wife and sisters-in-law. Really got tired of "why can't my Mac do that". My wife has since thrown in the towel because her industry is not Mac friendly, and my sisters in law are in nirvana now that they have figured out various MS emulators to run the stuff they need. So everybody's happy.

At one time I had probably five different MS configured computers in the house, most of them multiple partitions with multiple OS's, along with a stupid assortment of Cisco routers, switches, etc. Annoying as hell, but you need a lab... Anyways, I have never gotten a virus, worm, or trojan horse. Part of that may be that MS is pretty reliable when you keep things up to speed, and part of it may also be I don't hit the porn sites, bit torrents, use pirate software, download music, etc. I think my computer habits make me a pretty small target to begin with...

Played with Linux when Novell started to drift that way. Mandrake and a few other flavours. Couldn't be bothered as it didn't seem to do anything MS couldn't, and if time is money, it was a lot cheaper to just buy and install a MS operating system. Or Mac, as you prefer... And then I got out of IT and really didn't care; just wanted minimal hassles.

So now I'm down to two computers, both custom built jobs running XP SP3. Dual Xeon mobo setups with nuclear powered graphics cards, lots of memory, and high speed drives. GIS requires a lot of horsepower for spatial analysis and screen refreshes, both from the CPU and from the graphics card. ESRI does have a Linux solution I think, but to the best of my knowledge ArcMap and PCI Geomatica don't run on Macs. Nor Microstation. Nor my digitizing table. And I think AutoDesk doesn't offer much for the Mac in the way of GIS/map server software.

So Macs aren't really an option in the geomatics world. You can run them on some sort of emulator or whatever, I'm sure, but I'd just as soon cut out the middleman. And I'm quite comfortable rummaging around in the guts of a PC, changing out cards, memory, drives, etc as required.

Other than that... Firefox and Thunderbird - I've never had any love for Internet Exploder and Outlook Distress. Comodo firewall. Avast anti-virus. If I ever did feel the need for anti-spam solutions, I'd go back to source validation software.

I'm pretty comfortable with XP and it does everything I need professionally and personally, so I don't think this new OS coming out this fall or whatever is likely to turn my head.

Running XP and FF 3.5. I can't complain about how the thing runs, and the setup is good for gaming when I do get the down time to actually be able to do that.

HP Pavilion dv9768 Laptop, Vista Home Premium SP 2, Intel Core 2 2.0 GHz, 4.00 GB Ram.

So far it's the fastest, most powerful and sexiest system I've ever had, plays all the games I want to play and does the DVD and picture things really well. I am loving it, got it in a shopping channel pack with a carry bag and tv tuner, multi port and some other stuff.

It's light years ahead of the system I came off of, a Windows 98 SE 256 MHz crap box... it was a gaming class PC in it's day lol.

Yeah but your sister rapes you for it whenever she gets a whine-on. I'm surprised you still have hair on your nuts.

SheWolf wrote:

Yeah but your sister rapes you for it whenever she gets a whine-on. I'm surprised you still have hair on your nuts.

Yeah.... That doesn't happen anymore, I lock the comp all the time, even if I just go to get a snack, and I randomly go for bike rides at odd times during the day.

Vista 64 bit, IE 8, on a home built Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Kentsfield 2.66GhZ, Asus Striker Extreme MB, 16G Corsair PC8500, nVidia 8800 GTX x2, Dual Samsung SyncMaster 226BW Monitors....

SpaGuru wrote:

Vista 64 bit, IE 8, on a home built Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Kentsfield 2.66GhZ, Asus Striker Extreme MB, 16G Corsair PC8500, nVidia 8800 GTX x2, Dual Samsung SyncMaster 226BW Monitors....

I hope your cooling system hold out...

...Thermaltake jumbo fan with 7 case fans... Been working good for the past year and a half

motokid wrote:

What's your poison?

My home computer is a Dell laptop with:

LINUX - Ubuntu OS

I browse with Firefox.

I have done my very best to ween myself, and my family off Microsoft products and into the world of Linux.

I do have a desktop at home with Windows XP.

Anybody else using a Linux Distro?

My present cheap assed method of a hotrod pc: Take a laptop and a tower with multi processors originally set up for Vista. Switched them back to XP. Way faster than with Vista.

Meh, not much of a speed demon but works for me.

feet

ha....forgot about this thread.

My dell laptop with Ubuntu fried it's motherboard quite some time ago.

After about 6 months of no laptop I bought a used Toshiba from my sister-in-law and wiped the hardrive clean before installing Linux Mint on it.

Happy as a clam again.

XP Pro on a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, some kind of intel dual core, and a decent (dedicated) graphics card.

Never felt the need to pay the premium for Macs, the comparable macbook was 2x as much money when I bought my dell. Plus I hate OSx. Windows just works for me. I use my computer to browse the net, write papers, play the occasional game, and touch up photos.

Test driving Ubuntu 11.04 on a live-cd.

It's a Beta version....I like what I see.

They appear to be going for the tablet look.
OpenOffice is gone, but it's replaced with LibreOffice.

Nice looking OS.

Let me start by saying that I have owned Windows based PC's ever since they came out. Through my life I probably average about 1 new computer a year believe it or not. I have built MANY MANY PC's for myself and others throughout the years too. I have had to fix them all throughout the years too! Well, a couple years after my gamin laptop (ViciousPC) died, I decided to get a MacBook Pro. 1st Mac ever. Well, I instantly fell in love with Apple and since then I have bought a 27 inch iMac, an iPad, an iPhone and and iPod. I am now an Apple convert through and through. I no longer have to worry about virus' or shit not working. Everything works and works flawlessly. I actually also have Windows installed on both my Macs just incase but never need it. SOOOO, Macs with Snow Leopard (Lion will be out soon) and Safari browser all the way.

-For work/personal use-
Computer: 2008 Apple iMac 20"
OS: Mac OS X 10.5.8
Longest uptime: 154 days, before I had to restart for an update.
Browser: Google Chrome
This set up does everything my work and I require flawlessly, no viruses, constantly downloading and seeding torrents, porn sites, and while idling it contributes to cloud processing or grid processing for Berkeley's BOINC project.


-For Mobile use-
Computer: 2009 Dell XPS 15"
OS: Linux Mint 10 Julia
Longest uptime: 82 days
Browser: Google Chrome
Again, this set up does everything I require flawlessly, no viruses, constantly downloading and seeding torrents, porn sites. No grid processing for this computer because it's usually sleeping or running on battery.


Google Chrome is a fast powerful lightweight browser, Safari is the next best thing, but does not beat Chrome in speed or simplicity. Built in to Chrome is a google(or search engine of your preference) search right in the actual address bar, which gives your instant results as you type, be it a website or general search. Have any of you tried opening other browsers at the same time as Chrome? Chrome beats them every time, especially compared to IE and FF. You can actually open FF or IE and wait a second then open Chrome and Chrome still wins.... Just saying...

All in all it doesn't matter what you use as long as you are comfortable with the speed and you're productive with whatever tasks you want/need done.

motokid wrote:

Test driving Ubuntu 11.04 on a live-cd.

It's a Beta version....I like what I see.

They appear to be going for the tablet look.
OpenOffice is gone, but it's replaced with LibreOffice.

Nice looking OS.

yeah I hear good things about the Ubuntu distro

LibreOffice .. not a very creative name (translated from spanish to english, open office, or free office) .. I support Linux servers, no desktop user productivity apps, so Im a little out of date .. how did LibreOffice evolve and what happened to OpenOffice?

I use a MAC for my personal laptop/computer and nothing against Microsoft, but I prefer MAC over a Windows system.

I don't know why Ubuntu switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice, but one thing I read was that LibreOffice made working directly with microsoft products much easier.

I currently have Mint Isadora as the only OS on my laptop.

I might go to a dual boot set up with Mint and Natty Narwhal.
Running off Live-cd gets a bit old after a few days.

I'm not sure I'm ready to ditch Mint completely in favor of a Beta release. We'll see what the weekend brings.

cryptomundo wrote:

how did LibreOffice evolve and what happened to OpenOffice?

When Oracle bought Sun (who owned OpenOffice), there was a meeting of the minds and Oracle's vision for OpenOffice did not line up with the core developers. So all the core developers left and forked it into LibreOffice.

As for my household, the only windows machines left are strictly related to work, but otherwise, everything else are macs running OS X. I do have a linux server as well which has a couple virtual machines to separate out functions and keep them isolated, such as one DNS/DHCP, another for LDAP, etc. Sure makes upgrades a whole lot easier!

In a past life, I was a Unix Administrator, turned into a Storage Engineer. I got tired of spending all day at work fixing things, then coming home and having to fix all the various Windows machines. Switched to OS X where pretty much everything "just works" (especially with a predominately Apple ecosystem...i.e. Wireless access points), and haven't looked back!

I have dual-booted Ubuntu 11.04 Beta, and I really am starting to like it a lot.

I haven't booted Mint in well over a week now and don't plan on doing so anytime soon.

It's quite a user friendly OS and I'd recommend it to anyone who's looking for an alternative to Windows.

I have an aging IBM ThinkPad running on SUSE 11.2. I have used mostly Linux OSs for the last decade or so. At various times ran Red Hat, Caldera, Mandrake, and other lesser-known distros. I ran RH Fedora on a Dell desktop that I ended up giving to my daughter. I've set up Linux Mint on machines for other family members. I ran Ubuntu for a while. The older distros were really buggy and VERY picky about the hardware. The newer versions are fantastic. Now that drivers for the popular wireless cards are available and built into the system (no work at all) these systems are easier to set up than a windows machine. Linux has proved to be extremely stable. The Firefox browser sometimes has fits but it never crashes the system. At various times I use Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers, but usually Firefox. I use Evolution for primary email but normally use a webmail service anyway. The wife just bought a 17" laptop with Windows 7. I set up the home network, two networked printers and the network scanner on that machine. Windows 7 actually seems to be OK- time will tell...

I've been using Chrome as a browser for a long time now and have gotten to where I love it.
My younger teenage daughter uses it exclusively on the desktop as well.

Definitely seems to respond faster than Firefox.